GeorithamDo you need a website if you have Instagram?
Instagram and a website do two different jobs, and the difference usually only shows up in an enquiry that never arrived and that nobody ever heard about.
Published on 2 min read
The question almost always comes from somebody for whom Instagram is working. And usually it really is: the profile is looked after, messages arrive, customers turn up. So why spend money on something that appears to do the same job?
Because it does not do the same job. The two act at different points in a buying decision, and occupying only one of those points loses you the other without your noticing.
What Instagram does well
Reaching people who were not looking for you. Showing what your work looks like. Building trust through faces and regularity. For anything visual, and anything that lives on recognition, there is little better.
That is real, and it is worth not talking down.
What Instagram cannot do
Get found by people searching for your service. Somebody typing “carpenter near me” or “web design” does not land on a profile. That is the search with the highest buying intent there is, and it happens off the platform.
Answer the second question. After “do I like this” comes “roughly what does it cost, how does it work, how long does it take, where are you”. Those answers do not fit in a post, and nobody looks for them by scrolling back through eight months of feed.
Work on a Sunday evening. Messages want answering. A page that has already explained the price range, the process and the opening hours works while you are away from your phone.
Belong to you. A profile is rented. Rules change, reach collapses, accounts get suspended, sometimes without explanation. If that is your only channel, it is your only risk.
The honest test
Three questions, and you need nobody to help you answer them.
How many of your last ten jobs came from somebody who did not already know you? If the answer is none, you are growing on referrals and on nothing else.
How often do you answer the same question in messages? Every repeated question is a section on a page that you write once and never again.
And: what happens to your business if the profile is gone tomorrow? If that answer is uncomfortable, you do not have a marketing problem, you have a concentration risk.
What we usually recommend
Not “a website instead of Instagram”, but a small website behind the Instagram you are already doing well.
In practice that means covering what the profile cannot: what you do, who for, how the process works, roughly what it costs, and a form. How much of that you need depends on your business, and it is the page your link in the bio can finally point at usefully.
If we conclude in conversation that Instagram is enough for your case for now, we say so. That is a real outcome, particularly for a business already at capacity, and then it is the right answer.